One Way or Another (17 page)

Three weeks later, Billy and I were wedged into a booth at Benny's, discussing our dire financial straits. The problem with my work as an actress was that it took forever, sometimes months, before I saw a cheque. I was owed thousands for my couple of lines in the AIDS commercial, but who knew when we would see it. Work had been slow for Billy; many of his regular bands were overseas and INXS was on hiatus while Michael made his film debut in
Dogs in Space
. We were worried. But like a meteor barrelling out of the sky, fortune suddenly landed.

‘Hey, guys,' smiled Mickey as she wiped up a wet patch on the table. ‘I was going to ask you, Nikki … we've got a busy period coming up with a lot of overseas acts coming to town, and we're going to need an extra pair of hands around here. Your name came up. We figure, you're here nearly every night anyway …'

I cocked my head.

‘You're offering me a job?'

‘Well … yeah. Just three nights a week.' She stood back with her hands on her hips, waiting for a response. I looked across at Billy, who had a lunatic grin splayed across his face.

‘Say yes, Nik,' he urged me.

‘We'll just have to discuss it for a bit, Mickey. I'll come down to the bar and talk in a second.'

‘What the hell?' Billy exclaimed when she'd gone. ‘Why didn't you just say “yes”? This is the answer to our problems. It doesn't get any better than this.'

‘Because I don't want to work here.'

‘Why not? The tips alone would be huge.'

‘This is where I come to drink with our friends. I don't want to wait on them.' I felt awful about the idea. I knew it made sense to accept the offer and I'd probably have fun, but I didn't want to do it.

‘You have to! We have no choice.' Billy was insistent.

‘Okay. All right. I'll do it but I think it's a bad idea.'

Truth be told, I didn't want to be exposed to temptation every single night. How could I explain that to my boyfriend? I hadn't touched any illicit substances since hitting rock bottom with Jackie, and I hadn't looked lustfully upon another rock and roller since Sex-on-Legs. But I knew my weaknesses, and to expose myself to all my vices in my workplace would be a test I didn't want to sit. But Billy was right. Our financial woes demanded action.

I went downstairs and discussed the details and the deal was done. I would start the next night.

*

The first night was quiet and Mickey showed me the ropes. I'd never done bar work before so she had to teach me everything from scratch. Drinking was easier than mixing drinks, I discovered, taking it all in a little sullenly. I felt like a drink or a line. Sade's band stopped by after their show at the Entertainment Centre and ordered tequila all round. As I poured, I explained that it was my first night on the job.

‘Then as part of your initiation, you must eat the tequila worm,' a cute guitarist demanded.

‘No way.'

‘Worm! Worm! Worm!' they all began to chant. I looked to Mickey for help, but she'd joined in the chant. ‘Worm! Worm! Worm!'

After some awkward digging around with a skewer, I managed to retrieve the bloated, dead creature and without a second's hesitation, put it in my mouth and chewed. It was cold and leathery and disgusting.

‘Not the tastiest worm I've ever eaten,' I said with a saucy smile before sauntering back to the bar. The band cheered and hooted. I don't know if it was the worm's purported effects or the hundred dollars I'd made in tips, but I felt pretty good in the cab home at three-thirty.

Working from eleven at night until four in the morning was no great challenge, as my sleeping patterns had been on this crazy cycle for some time. Some nights Billy would accompany me to work and sit at the bar for the whole evening. He was just having fun, but I felt he was spying on me. Opportunities for mischief crossed my path nightly but I resisted.

So many celebrities were known by pseudonyms, it was amusing to take their American Express cards and see their real names, some of which were nerdy and embarrassing. Doc Neeson from the Angels accosted me on the stairs one night. He was a tall, imposing man and stood on the top step looking down at me on the bottom.

‘My God, you're short. I always thought you were much taller.'

I laughed.

‘No, really. You come across as this statuesque Amazon of a girl,' he charmed with the hint of an indeterminate accent, stepping down to join me on the bottom stair. He actually picked me up and stared into my face.

‘You are a tall person trapped in a small person's body.' His eyes were aflame.

‘Thank you, I think. And you're a Bernard, trapped inside a Doc's body.'

We both laughed and he planted me back down on the ground.

*

Michael Hutchence hung around a bit after he'd finished filming
Dogs in Space
. The rest of the band were scattered about the globe.

‘So you're going to add movie star to your cap now, eh?' I asked.

‘We'll see. It's a different gig and hard work ... but good stuff. How's your acting going?'

I was flattered that he'd remembered.

‘I've got an AIDS commercial coming out on telly this week.'

Michael laughed. He'd been in a flat mood all night but this seemed to cheer him up.

‘That is the most ironic thing I've heard for a while.'

‘Thanks, buddy,' I laughed. ‘Not as funny as if you were in it.'

*

During the day I continued to do the audition circuit. It was a world of knock-backs and humiliation. One day I was called in to audition for a Coke commercial. This was a golden goose. Coke paid top dollar and the ad would be shown all over the world. Unfortunately the brief required that I wear a swimming costume. That was not my style. My body hadn't seen the sun for years. I was alabaster white and sprinkled with orange freckles. I didn't even own a swimsuit. For two dollars I picked up a black one-piece at a thrift shop on Bronte Road and after shaving my legs and rubbing fake tan all over my body, I looked like a streaky cut of bacon.

The casting director, Liz Mulliner, had her offices in a cramped back alley behind Oxford Street. She was the queen of casting in Australia. I'd auditioned in front of her many times and found her to be a gracious and classy woman. She had been good to me and given me a lot of encouragement, but even she could not disguise her smile when I peeled off my clothes to reveal the marshmallowy, tangerine-smeared vision that was my body. I was lined up with a bevy of bleached-blonde Bondi babes and I wanted to crawl off and die of embarrassment. The looks of incredulity from the bimbo brigade were humiliating and I left with my self-esteem running down my cheeks. The tears didn't stop until I'd jumped off the bus in Paddington and run home to bed.

I'm not sure if she did it out of compassion or not, but Liz rang me the next day to tell me that while I wasn't exactly what the Coke people were after, she did have a job for me. She offered me forty dollars an hour to read opposite actors during a full day of screen-testing. So although I wasn't auditioning for the film
The Umbrella Woman
, which would star the dashing Sam Neill, I was being hired to read the role that would be filled by Rachel Ward. I jumped at the opportunity.

It was great fun to act without the pressure of auditioning. The director, Ken Cameron, was an encouraging guide and I learned a lot just listening to him mentor the stream of auditioning hopefuls. Over the next few months Liz called me in to do the same kind of work and the experience was invaluable. I got to meet such fine directors as John Duigan, John Edwards and Gillian Armstrong and I took something away from all of them. They were the key players in the Australian film scene and I longed to work with them on a real film one day. I did end up auditioning for a Gillian Armstrong movie, but the audition called for me to sing a verse of ‘Viva Las Vegas' and it was not pretty. Sometimes being an actor felt like being a dancing monkey in a circus.

I did land one job on the ABC teen variety show
Beatbox
, playing Lindy Chamberlain – who had recently been found guilty of murdering her own baby – in a bad-taste skit. The make-up department transformed me into an exact replica of Lindy in a terrible brown pageboy wig, frumpy blue dress and dowdy make-up. I stumbled briefly into the wrong studio and gave the
Playschool
mob a fright. I was dubious about the verdict, believing the dingo truly had ‘taken her baby', so I felt a little guilty about taking the mickey. I told myself it was a tribute.

*

Really I was a terrible waitress and spent more time gossiping with patrons than working. My shifts began to thin out and if it hadn't been for the spectacular tips, I might have thrown it in. I was determined to give up the job as soon as the elusive AIDS cheque arrived. Billy and I had been trying to embrace a more healthy lifestyle, although he was sometimes away on tour and I knew that his willpower was not made of steel. I was drinking less now; I figured all the booze I was pouring had turned me off the stuff.

One night in October, toward the end of a shift, I was shouted a drink by Grace Knight from the Eurogliders. We were standing at the bar discussing Scottish surnames with her friend, a film director, when I felt an overwhelming urge to be sick.

Within seconds I was leaning over the toilet, dry retching after flushing the vodka away. There were a few girls near the sink; they raised their eyebrows and gave me a wide berth. It occurred to me that I'd spent the last few days feeling vaguely off-colour. Maybe my liver had gone on strike. After washing my face and reapplying some bright lipstick, I wandered into the small kitchen out the back. It was run by a husband and wife team and I'd never had much to do with them before. I wasn't even sure if they spoke English.

‘Hey, people. Could I please get a bowl of plain rice?'

‘You want chicken? Pork?'

They leapt to their feet, overjoyed to be of service. I'd only ever seen them serve a handful of meals in all my time at Benny's. They were there chiefly to impress the licensing office, I supposed, as Benny's was officially classed as a restaurant.

‘No, just plain rice,' I groaned, as another wave of nausea hit.

The two of them giggled behind their hands. I shook my head, missing the joke.

‘You got baby, yes?' the man asked eagerly.

‘What? No!' I pulled a face of disgust. Was I looking fat? I looked at my stomach. How rude these people were!

‘My wife. She see things.' The weird little guy pointed to his eyes. ‘She know things. You got a baby. Oh yes.'

He handed me a bowl of rice.

Back at the bar, I spooned it distractedly into my mouth. I was on the pill and almost always remembered to take it. When was my last period? Think. Think. With the crazy, drug-fuelled time I'd been having, I couldn't honestly remember. It seemed a distant memory. The rice filled the empty pit in my gut and I promised myself a trip to the doctor the next day for a test. Just to rule out the possibility. Another drama I could do without.

The test came back positive.

‘When was your last period?' asked the doctor, an elderly man who resembled Colonel Sanders from the Kentucky Fried Chicken ads.

‘I can't remember. But I'm on the pill,' I protested. ‘I can't be pregnant.'

He waved a dismissive hand.

‘If you are sick or have diarrhoea or any number of things, it can affect your hormones. Interactions with other drugs ...' He gave me a judgemental once-over.

Not counting my current nausea, I hadn't been sick since the terrible heroin night. That was surely too long ago – but I had to admit to myself that my dedication to taking the pill had slipped into a whenever-I-remembered routine. After subjecting me to a thorough examination, external and internal, the physician disposed of his rubber gloves distastefully and sat behind his desk.

‘I'll give you a referral to Dr Oscar H—,' he said, without looking up at me. ‘I'm assuming you will be assessing your options. Do you know who the father is?'

I was offended.

‘Yes, I'm in a relationship.'

‘Well, Dr H— will help you with whatever you decide to do.'

I resented his casual disdain for what was a monumental moment in my life. His mind was already on his next patient, my situation having been scribbled away to become another doctor's problem. I was an unmarried young woman with too-big hair, too much make-up and a decadent wardrobe. Dr Dismissive wanted nothing more to do with me.

With great waves of trepidation, I told Billy the news over dinner at the Bondi Hotel. A grim-faced woman lobbed a plate of greasy fish and chips onto the laminex table and we smiled politely. Billy stayed silent, concentrating on his fish as he swam it about the plate in a sea of lemon juice. We managed a few mouthfuls and then strolled along the esplanade by the sand. It was a full moon and the sparkling crests on the waves looked like silver fish leaping from the dark water. I was reminded of home.

‘What do you want to do?' he asked solemnly.

‘What do you want to do?' I lobbed back.

We walked in silence for a few minutes while the sea breeze whipped our hair about our faces. A cold front blew up from the south and I shivered. My mouth kept filling with dry locks and I had trouble seeing where I was going. A punitive lashing. Billy passed me his jacket and wrapped a protective arm around me. Together we walked the entire length of the long curve of Bondi Beach, down to the baths and then all the way back north to the rock pools off Ramsgate Avenue.

‘A baby doesn't belong in Boystown,' Billy considered carefully.

‘We could move,' I said softly. I heard a seagull squawk and was startled because I thought they slept at night.

‘But rock and roll and babies? I don't know. What about your Oscar?'

Tears pricked my eyes and I felt an emotional swell in my throat.

‘Do you want me to just coat-hanger it? Is that what you want?' I stopped and my shoulders began to tremble as I tried to contain the torrent.

‘No, honey,' he said, consoling me. ‘I want whatever you want. I'm just warning you that I don't want us to get in over our heads.'

We stood, silhouetted against the grey sky and distended moon, holding each other forever.

On the fluorescent bus ride back to Oxford Street we held hands tightly, our thumbs massaging each other's fingers nervously.

‘My parents will kill me.' I wanted to make them proud and this was not the way to do it.

‘It's not about them.'

Billy was right, but I had not yet managed to shake the tug of my parents' disapproval. The umbilical cord stretched a long way.

‘Let's think about it for a few days before we decide.'

*

That night I lay awake with my hands resting on my warm, flat belly. My thoughts returned to the night I had lain awake listening to fruit bats before the termination in Tweed Heads. I rolled away from Billy and let my tears fall to the pillow. Trembling beneath the weight of the decision, it was impossible to think clearly. Why did I feel so ashamed? I believed that women should have the right to choose. My life was important too. Billy's life was important. The little pulsing bundle of cells dividing in my uterus was a potential person, but until it had a heartbeat and a nervous system, did it count as a life?

A tree is a life. A leaf is a life. The fish and chips we'd just eaten were once alive. There are levels of life. An embryo is not a foetus or an infant. But I loved Billy, and the thought of the two of us creating a little version of ourselves was a magical one.

But I wanted fame and fortune. I had barely scratched the surface of my career. I wanted to be Madonna the rock star, not Madonna the sad-faced mother who had stared at me from church alcoves all my life. And yet the thought of having another embryo sucked from my body felt wrong. I certainly didn't believe in the God of my parents, the God of the Bible. I'd spent enough time in churches and confessionals, listening to men in purple robes and eating wafers, to know that no God in his or her right mind would be a party to that. But something like a whisper of morality stirred inside me. I couldn't always hear it over the noise of rock and roll, but lying inert in the cool spring breeze, the voice became clearer.

The voice was not a divine, booming echo from above but a small, gentle version of my own voice. It simply said, ‘You know the answer. You are the answer.' And I realised with a bolt of revelation that God didn't make man in his own image; man made God in his image. Human beings had projected God out of ourselves like a laser-beam, producing a man with a white beard, a monkey with eight arms, a chorus of toga-wearing libertines, a warlike entity with no name, an earthy fecund woman and any number of other images. And when Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within you, he meant exactly that. I was God. Billy was God. Mum and Dad and the kids were divine and even Rod Stewart was a deity (OK, I'd known that all along). I didn't need guilt or shame anymore because I realised that the only one judging my behaviour was me. If I was God I could bend the rules, break them or make them; my life was my creation and I made it up as I went along. I asked myself aloud, ‘What do you want to do, Nikki?'

And I answered confidently, with tears swelling into sobs, ‘I want to give this baby a life.'

*

The next day I walked the two kilometres up terrace-lined Liverpool Street, through Rushcutters Bay, past the bobbing yachts and up to the Edgecliff tower where the medical rooms were. Dr Oscar H— was slick, friendly and in his late forties. His smile was so inviting that I felt instantly relaxed with him. He was the antithesis of the cold and condescending doctor who had written me the referral.

‘I want to have this baby,' I told him. He nodded thoughtfully.

‘I'll examine you.' He pointed to a screen and asked me to undress behind it. After another thorough examination, he sat back down and slipped a pair of reading glasses onto his nose.

‘Now, my dear, I would like you to have an ultrasound. That's where they put a device on your tummy and have a look at the baby. Your uterus seems larger than I would have suspected. I want to eliminate the possibility that you are carrying a multiple pregnancy.'

My eyes widened. There might be more than one baby growing inside me? I found the thought horrifying and amusing at the same time. As he wrote me a referral for the scan, I put the question I'd been dreading.

‘I've had a few drinks … a few too many. Will that ...?'

‘My dear, do you realise how many women have taken this or that or got drunk or fallen down steps or any host of terrible things and gone on to have perfectly healthy babies?'

I shook my head.

‘Nearly every one of them. So long as you take proper care of yourself from the moment you know you want to have this baby, you'll have not too much to worry about. Worry is the worst thing for you and the baby.'

The next day I fronted up to the ultrasound clinic on the second floor of a building on Market Street. I'd drunk a litre of water and held it in my bladder as instructed but I was ready to leak all over the waiting-room floor. My leg tapped impatiently and I silently begged someone to call my name before I had an embarrassing accident.

A few minutes later I was summoned and I bunny-hopped into the examination room. Up on the hard table, the radiographer exposed my marble-white belly and squirted a cool gel onto my skin. A television monitor stood in front of her and she turned it so that I could watch the procedure onscreen. A phallic device was rolled over my lower abdomen and immediately I could hear a noise that sounded like a rapid drumbeat.

‘That's your baby's heart.' She smiled at me.

‘So, I really am pregnant?' I asked, almost believing for the first time that this was not all a mistake.

‘Not only are you pregnant, love, but your dates are a bit out. I'd be guessing you're about eighteen weeks pregnant … nearly halfway there.'

I blinked back tears and breathed deeply. Fears came crashing down on me. The chemicals and abuse I had subjected myself to in that time were mind-boggling.

‘Does it look all right … I mean … is it normal?'

‘I'm just checking everything … We can't give guarantees. But if everything is growing in proper proportion you're pretty safe to assume that all is well.'

She fiddled around and tapped on her keyboard. My mind churned thoughts and fears and dreams. I could hear the woman pointing out kidneys, bladders and lungs. I dragged myself back into the moment and looked at my baby's profile, saw its little hands open and close.

‘You should be starting to feel movements soon,' she said. ‘You're very petite, aren't you? Not even showing yet. But you'll pop out in the next few months.'

The reality of pregnancy began sinking in. I would swell to enormous proportions and then have to give birth. I looked at the little hands on the screen and wanted to hold them in my own.

*

I was twenty. I had no steady income and was questioning my relationship. I was obsessed with becoming famous. I had every reason to believe that a baby would be the worst thing for me right now and yet I felt utterly compelled to embrace it.

I rang Billy at work as soon as I got home. I had a black and white ultrasound picture of our child. It looked like a grainy grey wave with the curve of a profile and a small foot.

‘How many heads does it have?' he asked.

‘One head and two legs and two arms and it's perfectly healthy and I'm nearly five months pregnant.'

Silence.

‘Billy?'

‘Shit,' he mumbled. ‘Well, what are we going to do? Your call.'

‘We're going to be a mummy and a daddy,' I cried into the phone.

‘Super.' He sounded almost pleased.

Billy brought a teddy bear home and we laughed and cried at the same time.

*

I went back to Dr Oscar.

‘Your due date is February 8th.'

He stood up, came around his desk and wrapped his arms around me.

‘You will make a wonderful mother. I can tell these things,' he whispered, and I thought in that moment that I might call my child Oscar if it were a boy. There would be the added bonus of being able to say quite truthfully that I had an Oscar! He wrote me a script for an iron supplement and told me to rest up and eat well.

At home, I lay on the couch and ran my fingers over my not-quite-flat belly. The doctor had shown me the hard ball that was just beginning to peek up and out from my pubic bone. My breasts had become larger and harder. I was surprised that neither Billy nor I had noticed. Shutting my eyes, I traced my growing womb. At that moment I felt a tiny ripple, bouncing like popcorn beneath my fingers. Another bump with a little more force, and then stillness. I sat up, breathing deeply. This was real. I was not dreaming. There was a living person growing inside me. Not a blob of cells, or a bacterial infection. A person.

After much rehearsal, I rang Dad from the bedroom and calmly told him the news. His reaction was anything but calm and he tried to persuade me to think of alternatives, a funny line for a Catholic to take, I thought. I begged him to break it to Mum gently. I didn't want her to panic.

‘Dad, I've finally got my cheque for the AIDS commercial and we've found a nice unit in Bellevue Hill. The money will help to get everything ready. I've got a great doctor and we are really, really happy, so please just accept this.'

He had to accept it, of course. Mum surprised me by ringing the next day and giving us her stilted and frightened blessing. I knew what was going through her head but she had the grace not to share all of her concerns with me. She pretended to be excited and almost convinced me that she was.

‘Why don't you come home, Nikki?' Her voice cracked and I had to say goodbye before I broke down. I couldn't go home. Not yet.